Bipartisan Foreign Policy Experts Highly Critical of Bush Administration

Foreign Policy surveyed more than 100 bi-partisan foreign policy experts on the "war on terror". They've compiled a report they call The Terrorism Index. It is highly and most notably, universally critical of the Bush Administration response to the 9/11 terror attack. It's clear those in the know see the US position with respect to Al Qaeda's aims has deteriorated. As I've been saying since the war in Iraq began, the Bush Administration is playing right into bin Ladin's hands. The outcome vitually vindicates Kerry's foreign policy paper released before the election in 2004.
Hizroy at Obsidian Wings notes that there has been a lobsided response to it's release.

[...]before writing this post, I did a fairly extensive search of blogs that had covered it. None of the major right wing blogs did, as far as I could tell, and almost none of the sixty-odd blogs I found who had covered this story seemed to be on the right. I don't think it's fair to criticize any one blogger for covering or not covering a particular story, but when an entire half of the political spectrum is silent, I think that is revealing.


I know I'd have a lot more respect for the people who seem to be willing to toss aside our civil liberties, our moral standing in the world, our adherence to the Geneva Conventions and our own history of respect for the laws of war for the sake of winning the war on terror if they bothered to ask whether we have actually done all we can do without sacrificing our principles as a nation.

Foreign Policy: The Terrorism Index

Is the United States winning the war on terror? Not according to more than 100 of America’s top foreign-policy hands. They see a national security apparatus in disrepair and a government that is failing to protect the public from the next attack.


[...]Despite today’s highly politicized national security environment, the index results show striking consensus across political party lines. A bipartisan majority (84 percent) of the index’s experts say the United States is not winning the war on terror. Eighty-six percent of the index’s experts see a world today that is growing more dangerous for Americans. Overall, they agree that the U.S. government is falling short in its homeland security efforts. More than 8 in 10 expect an attack on the scale of 9/11 within a decade. These dark conclusions appear to stem from the experts’ belief that the U.S. national security apparatus is in serious disrepair. “Foreign-policy experts have never been in so much agreement about an administration’s performance abroad,” says Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations and an index participant. “The reason is that it’s clear to nearly all that Bush and his team have had a totally unrealistic view of what they can accomplish with military force and threats of force.”


Respondents sharply criticized U.S. efforts in a number of key areas of national security, including public diplomacy, intelligence, and homeland security. Nearly all of the departments and agencies responsible for fighting the war on terror received poor marks. The experts also said that recent reforms of the national security apparatus have done little to make Americans safer.


[...]Eighty-one percent, for instance, believe the detention of suspected terrorists at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, negatively affects the war on terror. The index’s experts also disapprove of how America is handling its relations with European allies, how it is confronting threatening regimes in North Korea and Iran, how it is controlling the spread of weapons of mass destruction, and its dealings with failing states, to name just a few. “We are losing the war on terror because we are treating the symptoms and not the cause,” says index participant Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. “[O]ur insistence that Islamic fundamentalist ideology has replaced communist ideology as the chief enemy of our time ... feeds Al Qaeda’s vision of the world.”


[...]Asked what presents the single greatest danger to U.S. national security, nearly half said loose nukes and other weapons of mass destruction, while just one third said Al Qaeda and terrorism, and a mere 4 percent said Iran. Five years after the attacks of September 11, it’s a reminder that the greatest challenges may still lie ahead. MORE